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In one peak period yesterday it went to £365 per MWh and I'd expect the same today. Unlike in Texas, UK consumer electricity firms have to apply the price cap, so while you can get electricity for £0 in the middle of the night sometimes (though not so much recently) that full £365 wasn't passed on to you, but of course the financial strain of such offerings under current situations means these firms go bankrupt, and sooner or later the government will end up having to fix it.
Everything paying Contract for Difference subsidies would be above water now, not just the nuclear plant, the most expensive older wind farms are actually net profitable for the government via its wholly owned energy subsidy company. If your wind farm is guaranteed £150 per MWh, and electricity sells for £365 per MWh, you're paying the government £215 per MWh of the income from selling wind power - if you put up a newer, cheaper farm and only secured £80 per MWh, that's £285 per MWh you're giving the government, and your investors are probably re-assessing their appetite for risk accordingly, if they'd just said "Fuck it, we'll build it without a subsidy" that £285 per MWh is profit.
I assume these are to some extent temporary price hikes caused by the fact we generate a lot of electricity from natural gas, and the weather is cold so people also need that gas to heat their homes right now (also it hasn't been too windy this winter which doesn't help electricity generation). So - ignoring the Russia thing - you still have to consider year-round averages to compare the Hinkley strike price with the current peak. Hence my 50% figure based on our domestic price per kWh going up from 16p to 24p.
Without that it is only possible for prices to fall after we build a lot more wind turbines (projects out to 2025 are only a few Gigawatts extra, not enough) and storage (10GWh more storage in the UK would trim the top peak prices, but you'd need an order of magnitude more to make a difference on midday price trends) and the more effective that storage is, the less economic sense it makes without subsidy. If I buy electricity for £30 per MWh and sell it for £350 per MWh that'll quickly pay off my investment in storage, but if I buy it for £30 per MWh and sell it for £40 per MWh because we've stabilised prices, that's a long time to pay back my investment in storage.
Basing your figure on the consumer cost means in the current environment it just tells you what the price cap is, and that cap is set by government. It rises in April this year (to 28p per kWh) and is expected to rise again later this year, and then perhaps again next year. That cap doesn't reflect the actual cost of the electricity, the difference is why dozens (yes, dozens) of consumer electricity companies have gone bankrupt in the UK in recent months.
As I said, renewables are cheaper and faster to build: offshore wind a few years ago was given guaranteed strike prices of only £40/MWh.
Current electricity spot prices are volatile because gas is expensive, not because nuclear is cheap. Besides, the government doesn't guarantee outrageous gas prices for thirty years.
Compare Hinkley's strike price to £40/MWh and don't mention the storage cost!
Compare Hinkley's strike price to £365/MWh and don't mention that's a spike not a long term average!
Take your pick :-)
